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Abstract

The visual hull is an efficient shape approximation for the purpose of
reconstructing and visualizing dynamic objects. Recently, rapid progress in
graphics hardware development has made it possible to render visual hulls from
a set of silhouette images in real-time.

In this paper we present several new algorithms to improve the generality and
quality of hardware-accelerated visual hull rendering. First, a multi-pass
approach employs texture objects and the stencil buffer to enable the visual
hull rendering algorithm to deal with arbitrary numbers of input images.
Secondly, flexible programmability of state-of-the-art graphics hardware is
exploited to achieve smooth transitions between textures from different
reference views projected onto visual hulls. In addition, visibility problems
with projective texture mapping are solved by using the shadow mapping
technique. We test our rendering algorithms on various off-the-shelf graphics
cards and achieve real-time frame rates.